Interstellar Boundary Explorer

Roughly the size of a card table, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is the latest in NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers spacecraft.

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NASA IBEX Heliosphere Illustrated

Credit: SwRI

This NASA-provided graphic shows the heliosphere around the sun. The region is dominated by the sun and s inflated, like a bubble, in local interstellar…Read More »

material by the million mile-per-hour solar wind. This bubble keeps out the ionized or charged particles and magnetic fields from the galaxy and so protects us from dangerous galactic cosmic rays. Less «

IBEX Payload on Its Test Fixture

The picture shows the IBEX payload on its test fixture just before the technicians inserted it in to the thermal vacuum chamber.

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Mystery Emissions Spotted at Edge of Solar System

Credit: Southwest Research Institute (SwRI)

An all-sky map made by the IBEX spacecraft shows a surprising bright ribbon of emission coming from the edge of the solar system.

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Head-On Crash Spotted Between Solar Wind and Earth's Magnetic Field

Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

The IBEX spacecraft has found that Energetic Neutral Atoms, or ENAs, are coming from a region just outside Earth's magnetopause where nearly stationary…Read More »

protons from the solar wind interact with the tenuous cloud of hydrogen atoms in Earth's exosphere. Less «

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Model of Earth's Magnetic Field Lines

Credit: Southwest Research Institute/IBEX Science Team

This image shows the first-ever view of the magnetospheric plasma sheet in profile, as seen by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) from outside…Read More »

the magnetosphere. It shows the densest portions of the plasma sheet, largely following the modeled magnetic structure. Less «

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Ribbon at the Edge of the Solar System

Credit: Heerikhuisen et al.

NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft discovered a mysterious giant ribbon at the edge of the solar system. The mystery may have been…Read More »

solved. "We believe the ribbon is a reflection," says Jacob Heerikhuisen, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is where solar wind particles heading out into interstellar space are reflected back into the solar system by a galactic magnetic field." Less «

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IBEX Model of the Interstellar Magnetic Fields

Credit: NASA/IBEX/UNH

A model of the interstellar magnetic fields – which would otherwise be straight -- warping around the outside of our heliosphere, based on data from NASA's…Read More »

Interstellar Boundary Explorer. The red arrow shows the direction in which the solar system moves through the galaxy. Less «

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Cosmic Ray Intensities Compared With Predictions

Credit: Nathan Schwadron/UNH-EOS

Cosmic ray intensities (left) compared with predictions (right) from NASA's IBEX spacecraft. The similarity between these observations and predictions…Read More »

supports the local galactic magnetic field direction determined from IBEX observations made from particles at vastly lower energies than the cosmic ray observations shown here. The blue area represents regions of lower fluxes of cosmic rays. The gray and white lines separate regions of different energies—lower energies above the lines, high energies below. Less «